Ha! Exactly right -- every single LCD display I've ever looked at was either four times the price of a good CRT or was distinctly grainy compared to my 19" CRT at 1600x1200. I do graphics work (among other things) for a living, and high resolution with smooth pixel blend is an absolute must. It frustrates me no end that a $2500 LCD flat panel the size of a car windshield is still only 1280x720 or some such. Yeah, I could do my work on it from across the room, but for now I'd rather just sit closer to my 19" half-ton CRT.
Yeah, but the system is capable of distinguishing between RWW and intranet access; they don't even use the same logon protocol. A DOS attack on RWW shouldn't affect local administrator logon at all. Why does SBS force access to Administrator through RWW, then refuse to let you put safeguards on it?
Any reasonable system will lock out the account (even if temporarily) for a period of time.
Microsoft's Small Business Server system has a feature called Remote Web Workplace, whereby you remotely log on your office network over the Internet. Apparently, RWW on SBS specifically refuses to lock out the Administrator account. If you have RWW enabled, your only protection is to have such an obflavious administrator password that by the time a hacker can break it, you've already changed it again.
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at." C.D. Bales, Roxanne
Don't feel stupid. It's a very tough competition. The median score for Americans last year was 82 out of a possible 432 points, about 19%.
But it's also sort of specialized to certain kinds of problem-solving ability and appallingly memory-intensive--there's simply not time to solve these problems on paper. I know some very bright people who'd be utterly bumfuzzled by this competition.
But if you like these sorts of puzzles, it's still a ton of fun.
Since they give the directions to the puzzle in advance, most or all of them could also be coded in advance.
Oh yes? For the 2004 test, what kind of process would you create from the directions, "How many circles are either shown or implied by the diagram?"
Or take number 19, "Corral". From the directions and the example, how would you anticipate that the actual problem used a hex grid instead of a square grid, requiring a very different approach?
And even for the ones where the instructions are fairly clear, just how many of them could you really code (and debug!) in 24 hours? Number 22 for instance, where your program has to allow for competition-time entry of several different factors (the puzzle background, the totals, the circles for horizontal and vertical pairings).
For now, the human brain is still the most versatile (and most rapidly reprogrammable) problem-solving computer.
Like any talented artist, Da Vinci surely had the ability to create a vivid image in his mind and hold on to it for the days or weeks necessary to bring it to reality. He also had the ability to invent new and unconventional approaches to problems. He would probably have been very good at pencil-and-paper puzzles like these.
I have no idea how the champions can churn through 25 of these in two and a half hours--that's one every six minutes. Yikes!
I competed myself last year; I submitted 8 correct answers and no wrong ones, finishing well out of the top 50%; I eventually solved 18 of the 25 puzzles, but only over the course of several days.
I believe that the people who solve these in 2-1/2 hours are doing nearly all the work in their heads, whether it's a rolling block puzzle or a crossword, then simply scribbling down the entire solution at once. A fantastic memory--swift, accurate, and strongly visual--is a definite advantage in this competition (an advantage I don't have).
More than a little mathematical background isn't unhelpful either. For one puzzle I did solve last year, #19 "Point Pairs", it's helpful to know more Pythagorean triplets than 3,4,5. I did it rather quickly (that is, in under an hour) but it was one of the 5 least solved puzzles last year.
What little advice I can offer:
Have lots of sharpened pencils, scratch paper, and a good eraser waiting.
Go to the bathroom just before time for the test.
Print more than one copy of the test.
Don't wait for the last page to print before you start working on the first page.
If you're married or involved, get your SO to take the kids to the zoo for the afternoon, so you have peace and quiet to work. For the rest of you, lock the basement door and tell your parents not to knock for the next 2-1/2 hours.
Combining "bits and pieces" from this posting and the preceding five (some slight allowance for tense and common words must be made), I find the following alarming statements:
the Internet community / [is] publishing / anonymous / suggestions for / terrorism / [in] article[s] running on Yahoo News / AOL, MSN, and Earthlink
rumored / revelation that / three recent / occurrences / (touches / 30,000 people / collectively) / will change the landscape / forever
'hidden' information / [has] doubled / success in this endeavor / - "nearly everyone will go" / - about 10% of IBM's staff / is already / infected
pro-freedom / dissidents / are looking for ways / to take down an airliner / for nothing
commercialized / products/procedures/systems / [and] hardware / too risky / [at] exaggerated prices / as high as $950
bits and pieces / at an unidentified / 'banned' sites / can be puzzled together / to improve / technique
an unidentifed / spokeswoman for the / FAA / points out that / [their] staff / [has] commitment to / more mundane matters
So Slashdot is advising the Internet terrorist community where to look for information on biological warfare and anti-aircraft weapons.
Now I know why I'm not a millionaire. Apparently the people who actually make it into Forbes themselves are the ones who can absorb five columns of Forbes in under 60 seconds.
irrational does not mean random, it means that, not only is the decimal repeating, but there is no decreeable pattern in the digits.
teslakid has it right. Irrational doesn't say that there is no pattern to the digits, only that there is no simply-repeating pattern that is the quotient of two integers.
For instance,.123456789101112131415161718192021222324... is irrational, but has a very definite pattern. Or consider the number limiting the following sequence:
.1 .121 .12122121 .121221212212212122121
and so on...
That's bollocks. I reckon that one day those maths nerds will discover the exact value of pi, and it will be a finite string of digits. There's no reason to believe it goes on for ever. Even if it's not in denary, it may be in another number system.
It's just arrogant to believe that pi goes on forever just because we want it to. When we find that pi comes to an end, all those mathematicians will look really fucking stupid.
Bollocks yourself. If pi can be expressed as a finite series of digits, then it can also be expressed as the quotient of two integers--which would make it a rational number. I can't quote you a proof, but mathematicians have long accepted that pi is irrational.
In any case, the important thing is not that it has an infinite series of decimal digits; so does 1/3. The important fact is that its sequence is non-repeating and apparently patternless.
Also, don't forget that Marijuana is a MAJOR cash crop. It's a multi-billion dollar industry in British Columbia alone. At some point, governments are going to realize they can make more from taxing the use of marijuana than they receive from the pockets of the pharmaceuticals.
Actually, many years ago the state of Arizona instituted an excise tax against marijuana (and one other illegal drug, perhaps cocaine). If you were caught smuggling a bale of ganja and didn't have the required excise stamps (like the ones on bottles of liquor or packs of cigarettes), then they levied an immediate tax against your weed, something horrid like $500 a pound.
This was supposed to make enforcement of drug laws more profitable and cause immediate financial loss to dealers even before they were prosecuted for possession or intent to sell.
Naturally, all the idiots rose up and protested, "But putting a tax on marijuana makes it sound respectable! This is just the first step in legalizing it! God will turn his face from us!" and similar hysterical babble.
Other states have tried the same thing, although with mixed success. In at least a few cases, the US Supreme Court or state Supreme Courts have decided that such taxes can violate the Constitution's "double jeopardy" protections.
So, how much faster can they spin the drives now with this improvement?
Slower, actually. If you spin too fast (or bump the drive), the bits will fall over. And not just a few bits. You've seen dominoes, right?
Remember, the bits are facing the direction of rotation, so centripetal force would be pulling them sideways. They're far more sensitive to sudden acceleration or deceleration, so these drives will take several seconds to spin up to full speed, and a sudden power failure will make all the bits fall on their faces.
(I wonder--the bits that are reversed, do they face backward? A lot of people get nauseous if they face backward while moving.)
Grammar checkers aren't needed by anyone who knows grammar [for them, it's an annoying waste of time]. Thus, people who'd recognize the checkers' poor performance aren't looking.
I'm an excellent speller, but I still benefit from a spell-checker to catch the occasional typo or chronic mistake (for instance, I tend to leave the terminal e off female). Somebody with good grammar can benefit similarly from a grammar checker, if it is reasonably reliable.
If Ford built a car so that when you turned the steering wheel left the car randomly chose between turning left and right, people would die and Ford would get sued. But if Microsoft builds a grammar checker that introduces as many errors as it corrects, all that is required is that the EULA says they aren't liable for any damages.
Thus, the people who "need" this service cannot be sure whether it served them well, or poorly.
--which is exactly why it is irresponsible for Microsoft to market the service if it isn't at least reasonably reliable. People who are neither good spellers or good grammarians need a product that they can trust not to introduce errors, and Microsoft just doesn't offer that.
Of course, if you're dumb, there's no point in telling you this -- you won't take smart advice.
By the way, DUMB != INCOMPETENT. I've known a number of really genuinely slow people (including a cousin with Down's) who weren't the least incompetent. They knew they were slow, and to make up for it they worked extra hard, took extra care, and listened carefully to people they could see were capable. Please don't assume all dumb people are yahoos.
Does anyone else in this thread feel *really* nervous about posting advice on grammar and spelling because you know that everyone will be reading what you say extra carefully looking for errors?
Actually, I'm surprised that your post apparently survived about 3-1/2 hours before some pedantic so-and-so pointed out that your third paragraph contains a split infinitive and a sentence fragment.
Ah, but MS works harder on their French grammar checker, don't you know? In fact, according to the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA), the latest update to the French grammar checker for Office 2003 is a critical security update, even when the French grammar checker hasn't been installed (or has been explicitly uninstalled).
Maybe MS is expecting desperate negotiations with Canada sometime soon. After all, Redmond isn't that far from the border...
Slashdot Mirror
...a finite improbability generator, so that people with cell phones in theaters and restaurants can be really annoying?
Ha! Exactly right -- every single LCD display I've ever looked at was either four times the price of a good CRT or was distinctly grainy compared to my 19" CRT at 1600x1200. I do graphics work (among other things) for a living, and high resolution with smooth pixel blend is an absolute must. It frustrates me no end that a $2500 LCD flat panel the size of a car windshield is still only 1280x720 or some such. Yeah, I could do my work on it from across the room, but for now I'd rather just sit closer to my 19" half-ton CRT.
Of course, by those standards, most Americans must be addicted to work, sex, and TV as well.
Ah, those sad lonely pastimes of Slashdotters...
Yeah, but the system is capable of distinguishing between RWW and intranet access; they don't even use the same logon protocol. A DOS attack on RWW shouldn't affect local administrator logon at all. Why does SBS force access to Administrator through RWW, then refuse to let you put safeguards on it?
But then, you specified a reasonable system, didn't you?
Any reasonable system will lock out the account (even if temporarily) for a period of time.
Microsoft's Small Business Server system has a feature called Remote Web Workplace, whereby you remotely log on your office network over the Internet. Apparently, RWW on SBS specifically refuses to lock out the Administrator account. If you have RWW enabled, your only protection is to have such an obflavious administrator password that by the time a hacker can break it, you've already changed it again.
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at." C.D. Bales, Roxanne
Don't feel stupid. It's a very tough competition. The median score for Americans last year was 82 out of a possible 432 points, about 19%.
But it's also sort of specialized to certain kinds of problem-solving ability and appallingly memory-intensive--there's simply not time to solve these problems on paper. I know some very bright people who'd be utterly bumfuzzled by this competition.
But if you like these sorts of puzzles, it's still a ton of fun.
Nope, no touching corners.
Since they give the directions to the puzzle in advance, most or all of them could also be coded in advance.
Oh yes? For the 2004 test, what kind of process would you create from the directions, "How many circles are either shown or implied by the diagram?"
Or take number 19, "Corral". From the directions and the example, how would you anticipate that the actual problem used a hex grid instead of a square grid, requiring a very different approach?
And even for the ones where the instructions are fairly clear, just how many of them could you really code (and debug!) in 24 hours? Number 22 for instance, where your program has to allow for competition-time entry of several different factors (the puzzle background, the totals, the circles for horizontal and vertical pairings).
For now, the human brain is still the most versatile (and most rapidly reprogrammable) problem-solving computer.
Like any talented artist, Da Vinci surely had the ability to create a vivid image in his mind and hold on to it for the days or weeks necessary to bring it to reality. He also had the ability to invent new and unconventional approaches to problems. He would probably have been very good at pencil-and-paper puzzles like these.
But would they have interested him?
I competed myself last year; I submitted 8 correct answers and no wrong ones, finishing well out of the top 50%; I eventually solved 18 of the 25 puzzles, but only over the course of several days.
I believe that the people who solve these in 2-1/2 hours are doing nearly all the work in their heads, whether it's a rolling block puzzle or a crossword, then simply scribbling down the entire solution at once. A fantastic memory--swift, accurate, and strongly visual--is a definite advantage in this competition (an advantage I don't have).
More than a little mathematical background isn't unhelpful either. For one puzzle I did solve last year, #19 "Point Pairs", it's helpful to know more Pythagorean triplets than 3,4,5. I did it rather quickly (that is, in under an hour) but it was one of the 5 least solved puzzles last year.
What little advice I can offer:
Combining "bits and pieces" from this posting and the preceding five (some slight allowance for tense and common words must be made), I find the following alarming statements:
the Internet community / [is] publishing / anonymous / suggestions for / terrorism / [in] article[s] running on Yahoo News / AOL, MSN, and Earthlink
rumored / revelation that / three recent / occurrences / (touches / 30,000 people / collectively) / will change the landscape / forever
'hidden' information / [has] doubled / success in this endeavor / - "nearly everyone will go" / - about 10% of IBM's staff / is already / infected
pro-freedom / dissidents / are looking for ways / to take down an airliner / for nothing
commercialized / products/procedures/systems / [and] hardware / too risky / [at] exaggerated prices / as high as $950
bits and pieces / at an unidentified / 'banned' sites / can be puzzled together / to improve / technique
an unidentifed / spokeswoman for the / FAA / points out that / [their] staff / [has] commitment to / more mundane matters
So Slashdot is advising the Internet terrorist community where to look for information on biological warfare and anti-aircraft weapons.
Yipe!
Now I know why I'm not a millionaire. Apparently the people who actually make it into Forbes themselves are the ones who can absorb five columns of Forbes in under 60 seconds.
I'm just not fast enough to get rich.
Reminds me of an old "Beetle Bailey" cartoon:
Sgt. Snorkel: Zero, go get me some rubber cement.
Zero: Rubber cement? [long thoughtful pause] Sure would make walking more fun.
on the third Saturday of August, 1969, but for some reason nobody came.
irrational does not mean random, it means that, not only is the decimal repeating, but there is no decreeable pattern in the digits.
.123456789101112131415161718192021222324... is irrational, but has a very definite pattern. Or consider the number limiting the following sequence:
.1
.121
.12122121
.121221212212212122121
teslakid has it right. Irrational doesn't say that there is no pattern to the digits, only that there is no simply-repeating pattern that is the quotient of two integers.
For instance,
and so on...
When you search for 666, you get it in the 2,440th place. Which can only mean...the world will end in the year 2440!!
Ah, yes, the Number of the Beast. And right next door in the 2441st place is 667, the Neighbor of the Beast.
That's bollocks. I reckon that one day those maths nerds will discover the exact value of pi, and it will be a finite string of digits. There's no reason to believe it goes on for ever. Even if it's not in denary, it may be in another number system.
It's just arrogant to believe that pi goes on forever just because we want it to. When we find that pi comes to an end, all those mathematicians will look really fucking stupid.
Bollocks yourself. If pi can be expressed as a finite series of digits, then it can also be expressed as the quotient of two integers--which would make it a rational number. I can't quote you a proof, but mathematicians have long accepted that pi is irrational.
In any case, the important thing is not that it has an infinite series of decimal digits; so does 1/3. The important fact is that its sequence is non-repeating and apparently patternless.
Also, don't forget that Marijuana is a MAJOR cash crop. It's a multi-billion dollar industry in British Columbia alone. At some point, governments are going to realize they can make more from taxing the use of marijuana than they receive from the pockets of the pharmaceuticals.
Actually, many years ago the state of Arizona instituted an excise tax against marijuana (and one other illegal drug, perhaps cocaine). If you were caught smuggling a bale of ganja and didn't have the required excise stamps (like the ones on bottles of liquor or packs of cigarettes), then they levied an immediate tax against your weed, something horrid like $500 a pound.
This was supposed to make enforcement of drug laws more profitable and cause immediate financial loss to dealers even before they were prosecuted for possession or intent to sell.
Naturally, all the idiots rose up and protested, "But putting a tax on marijuana makes it sound respectable! This is just the first step in legalizing it! God will turn his face from us!" and similar hysterical babble.
Other states have tried the same thing, although with mixed success. In at least a few cases, the US Supreme Court or state Supreme Courts have decided that such taxes can violate the Constitution's "double jeopardy" protections.
So, how much faster can they spin the drives now with this improvement?
Slower, actually. If you spin too fast (or bump the drive), the bits will fall over. And not just a few bits. You've seen dominoes, right?
Remember, the bits are facing the direction of rotation, so centripetal force would be pulling them sideways. They're far more sensitive to sudden acceleration or deceleration, so these drives will take several seconds to spin up to full speed, and a sudden power failure will make all the bits fall on their faces.
(I wonder--the bits that are reversed, do they face backward? A lot of people get nauseous if they face backward while moving.)
...a glass of chilled vodka, which could explain a lot today.
I'm an excellent speller, but I still benefit from a spell-checker to catch the occasional typo or chronic mistake (for instance, I tend to leave the terminal e off female). Somebody with good grammar can benefit similarly from a grammar checker, if it is reasonably reliable.
If Ford built a car so that when you turned the steering wheel left the car randomly chose between turning left and right, people would die and Ford would get sued. But if Microsoft builds a grammar checker that introduces as many errors as it corrects, all that is required is that the EULA says they aren't liable for any damages.
--which is exactly why it is irresponsible for Microsoft to market the service if it isn't at least reasonably reliable. People who are neither good spellers or good grammarians need a product that they can trust not to introduce errors, and Microsoft just doesn't offer that.
By the way, DUMB != INCOMPETENT. I've known a number of really genuinely slow people (including a cousin with Down's) who weren't the least incompetent. They knew they were slow, and to make up for it they worked extra hard, took extra care, and listened carefully to people they could see were capable. Please don't assume all dumb people are yahoos.
Does anyone else in this thread feel *really* nervous about posting advice on grammar and spelling because you know that everyone will be reading what you say extra carefully looking for errors?
Actually, I'm surprised that your post apparently survived about 3-1/2 hours before some pedantic so-and-so pointed out that your third paragraph contains a split infinitive and a sentence fragment.
Ah, but MS works harder on their French grammar checker, don't you know? In fact, according to the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA), the latest update to the French grammar checker for Office 2003 is a critical security update, even when the French grammar checker hasn't been installed (or has been explicitly uninstalled).
Maybe MS is expecting desperate negotiations with Canada sometime soon. After all, Redmond isn't that far from the border...